…wherein Whose God is it Anyways? inspires a second cricket post in a row!
The education of my cricket-ignorant kundi continues; I shall torment you with my progress, much like a toddler rushes back to a parent to exclaim, “I did it in the potty!” Like aforementioned kid, I, too would like a cookie and a pat on the head. Thanks, you’re the best.
So. WGiiA left a comment on my last World Cup post which piqued my kitten-like curiosity:
ok. just got very emotional seeing inzi get out and leave the field for the last time in an ODI. he deserved better circumstances under which to leave. [link]
I immediately assaulted consulted one of my cricket tutors, the one who kindly told me a bedtime story via speakerphone last night which starred Sachin Tendulkar– look, when one runs out of Ambien, one reaches for desperate alternatives– and expressively typed “?” in his GChat window. I didn’t expect to like or care about what I’d learn, but I wanted to find out more nonetheless, if only because I’m a sentimental wench and anyone’s last ____ always makes me a bit verklempt.I was told that the Pakistani captain was retiring and that because his team will not move to the next round, this would be his last opportunity to play cricket. At this, I became a typical sorority girl and murmured, “Aww–” but before I could tack more unnecessary “W”s on that cliched reaction, I learned even more. “Inzi” was a complex figure, the type who owns my attention; just as I was ready to dismiss him for being a PUNK at the Sahara Cup (you can’t assault a fan for calling you “Aloo!”), I learned that he also refused to back down from bullshit accusations leveled by racist umpires (yay for walking your team off the field…or…um…not coming back on the field after tea…whatever, the protesting is still hot).
Then, when I discovered that the klansman who inspired that dramatic gesture had been banned from hating on Asian teams, I was hooked. But. I’m still going to learn how to pronounce “O mote, sidha khara ho. Mota aloo, sara aloo!” or whatever it is he gets heckled with…like attracts like, and I’m a bit of a punk, too. 🙂
No wonder you all love cricket so much! This is fun! 😀
::
Anyone know where I ganked the caption from, i.e. what song I pilfered in an attempt to be clever? I’ll give you a hint; I’ve seen the movie whose soundtrack it is a part of over 90 times. Wot? Not enough of a hint? Your bad. 😀
Lol….thats okay Jeet kaake, As Mr Colbert would have said,your apology is accepted!! But yeah,excellent piece,nailed quite a few points that had been swimming in my head.
I was just in the Windies (two islands), and the excitement about the world cup is incredible. Everybody I meet is talking about it. Unfortunately, the frustration at ticket prices is also incredible. Very few people who live there can actually afford tickets, and the audience are rich visitors, who are mainly coming for the Super 8s. Sucks.
You are so right. That is the most important thing; it is what I should remind myself of when I’m tearing my hair out, follicle by follicle, because of those dreadful mosquitoes.
and it still makes me cry, after all these years. No wonder it’s my favorite Smiths song ever. No better present, for me. Thank you.
Smiths and Cricket? I like your steez Red Snapper. And totally approve of the message. In all this excitement I posted my comment on the wrong thread.
Wow, a fantastic performance by India to take them to the next round. I think Sri Lanka really lost the plot once Sehwag and Ganguly started going after their attack. Also, great efforts from Yuvi, Sachin, and Dravid in the middle; Dhoni went berserk in the end to take the total over 350. As far as the bowling was concerned, I think our pace-men did their job beautifully and set it up nicely for Kumble and Co. to finish it off. This means Bangladesh are out; I feel for them though; to be so close and then lose out.
Shaking “UMM” out of the reverie. Wake up bro!!
Sorry guys,
It was real unfair of me to use my superhuman abilities to foresee things. The match isn’t until tomorrow. Please ignore the last comment and go about your ordinary lives like nothing happened. Damn, I need to be more careful…
Anna: Thanks a lot for all the coverage; it’s brilliant.
Prasad,
You’ll see; then, you’ll believe;)
The departure of Inzi is indeed sad considering the activities in Jamaica at the moment. Pakistan is kicked out of the world cup, by Ireland. Good Lord man, Ireland had a policeman playing as a batsman. Within 24hrs of their loss, the Pakistani head coach is dead…now within Jamaica, considered murdered by a mafia. This is a tale of cricket gone very wrong. And at the helm of all this stands Inzi. As much as I love seeing the minnows beat goliath, the activities following this great win will forever put a damper on the whole tournament in the Caribbean.
And amidst all this Inzi decides to retire from cricket. Indeed it is a sad moment, from a lankan’s perspective, he was a great player. Did not captain well but that does not mean the boy should leave unnoticed. When he goes back to Pakistan, their won’t be crowds to greet him, instead most probably he will be welcomed by angry Pakistani’s he wanted his head last week.
Hats off to a great player. No matter the current circumstances, this will always remain a fact.
UMM, I didnt know that Mallus make such great bookies.. :))
So is it all true? That all the bookie income is tax-free (yeah yeah, apart from worldcup, its ALSO tax season)
Ack…this is what comes of football withdrawl. NFL and college football are done, nothing interesting will happen in the NBA or NHL for a month, and March Madness, while cool, only gives a few temporary fixes. Until the playoffs get going, we have to content ourselves with….cricket? God help us. The entire rest of the Galaxy must think we’re a bunch of stupid turlingdromes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Krikkit
Well, at least it’s not the summertime– that long, sports-empty death march to September called “baseball season.”
Speedy
But did he also feed them aloo-parathaas? Now that would have been really touching. 🙂
No, the more remarkable thing about him is his full religious beard. Given such piety, I can’t get over how he rushed into the stands, bat in hand, TV cameras rolling, and getting arrested.
inzi seemed a nice enough bloke;laidback,genial,slightly rustic(his interviews in vernacular are hilarious) ; however,two sore points for me were
1.The Aloo incident of course.If I was Thind I wouldnt have let him off so easy.(Does anyone remember though that the much revered Sunil Gavaskar actually kinda sorta defended Inzi’s bull charge)
2.The hyper-religiosity in the team.C’mon…its a game…..and plus,there are people belonging to other faiths in the team…..to revolve the team schedule around the prayers and make it a team effort IMHO(OMG,I just said IMHO!!) was a touch regressive.Prayers/God/religion is probably best kept personal in matters not directly related to religion.
“I was just in the Windies (two islands), and the excitement about the world cup is incredible. Everybody I meet is talking about it. Unfortunately, the frustration at ticket prices is also incredible. Very few people who live there can actually afford tickets, and the audience are rich visitors, who are mainly coming for the Super 8s. Sucks.”
aah, thanks. it’s good to know that the passion for cricket still exists amongst the people (who are being increasingly bombarded by american sports culture) and that it’s the ticket prices that are the barrier. this is where the icc and the wicb have failed. what’s the point of bringing the cup to the windies and then erecting barriers to local fan participation?
on a cheerier note, canada’s john davidson is giving the nz bowlers a beating. canada’s run rate was actually over 10 a few minutes ago! the target is steep but it’s nice to see the canadians go for it.
I can’t wait for this disgusting term ‘vernacular’ to fall out of use when describing desi languages. By itself there’s nothing wrong with the word per se, but in the context it’s used (by DESIS no less) it smacks of elitism, arrogance, condescension, and speaks of a powerful internalized self-loathing, illustrates enormously skewed power dynamics, horrible entrenched attitudes, as well as puts English up on a unnecessarily high pedestal. While treating our languages like slangy, infantile jargons to be laughed at.
Now back to Inzamam and cricket.
No offence to Anna but I expected more mature and extensive cricket WC coverage and discussion on SM. I don’t remember how many GBs we spend discussing Kaavya V.. Its too big event in sub continent to miss.
Anna isn’t a cricket expert; she’s barely a cricket fan. She is doing exactly what she was asked to do (by cricket heads on this blog) and more importantly, what she promised she could.
SM is successful because it never deludes itself– if you want a political blog, there are others which are a million times better. Same goes for cricket. Once we deviate from who we are, it ends.
The former thought is irrelevant– if our readers feel like discussing her, it’s not a waste. If it’s not your cup of chai, too bad. What you like might irk some of them. As for the last sentence, perhaps you are mistaking us for a different blog. We’re American. In America, this is wall-to-wall cricket coverage.
In the panoply of nations and national cultures, its only Americans that take pride, indeed nationalistic pride as shown in the comment above, in their ignorance of the rest of the world.
This is not to suggest that SM should somehow be in the business of cricket coverage.
Everyone is happy with the cricket coverage here — there’s a hundred other blogs if you don’t like it, DJ. We’re all having fun, and people are discussing cricket in the threads as much as they want to. In fact the tone of the coverage is just perfect, wonderful, superb, such a casual and fun vibe on these threads, it’s the best.
Hari, I think you got the wrong end of the stick. ANNA means that as an American who writes for a blog from an Indian-American perspective, she’s learning as she goes along, not having much knowledge about the game up till now. So she provides the space where we all shoot the breeze and crack jokes whilst we educate her about the game and brings her witty perspective on it all to us. It’s all about fun! And hanging out with ANNA is fun. And so is cricket. And that’s all she means. Nothing arrogant about it, just a way to be cool and vibe with people.
Hari, I think you’re seeing jingoism where there was only truth.
Please don’t twist my words. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of anything. Nor am I ignorant. The fact is, cricket is not popular in this country and that’s not my fault. Everyone who blogs here was born here, in this country where cricket is not popular.
I’m doing exactly what I was asked to do, what I promised to do. I’m sorry it’s not good enough for you, but since everyone else digs it, I’ll live.
Just curious: who’s everyone and how do you know they are all happy. I am perfectly okay with the cricket coverage here, its interesting and offbeat and in any case I do check other blogs for deeper coverage, but things do seem to be getting a wee too cliquish. What DJ said was perfectly polite and SM Intern already replied to his/her comment. I don’t see why another dressing down was needed.
Agree totally, but it still bears mentioning, cricket is growing strongly in America – United States of America Cricket Association. Not about to replace baseball, or even soccer just yet, but people have compared its popularity overall, to soccer in the 1980s. So in a few years it could become quite significant. Also, its history goes way back, back to before when baseball became big. It just remained an elite sport, while baseball morphed off of it to become what it is now. Just BTW, I saw my first cricket match in the US at Stanford University, the actual Indian XI as of then versus Stanford! Another bit of trivia – the first international cricket match anywhere was played between the US and Canada in 1844 !
ANNA:
I like boxing. You’re being very rude and jingoistic by not covering it. How dare you care more about your job than pleasing me. I think this violates my constitutional rights, somehow. You are a public accomodation. Now, accomodate me!
No, it was perfectly ignorant and oblivious. We are a second-generation blog written from an AMERICAN perspective. We don’t fly that flag to be obnoxious, we state that up front so people don’t leave unnecessary comments like his. If something is huge in the subcontinent, it gets covered in Indian blogs. We will never be able to do justice to things which are “huge” in the subcontinent, because WE ARE NOT IN OR FROM THE SUBCONTINENT.
I love how for once, people are being nice to me and supportive after this rash of insensitivity, and you lot think it’s indicative of a “clique-mentality”. The fact that they’re stepping up and trying to make me feel better while some of you continue down this path of complaint speaks volumes of how perceptive you are wrt what is actually going on here.
No, he didn’t mean “everybody” if you’re going to be a literalist about it, but perhaps a few of you are forgetting that a lot of our readers are just like me– they barely know or care about this sport. My posts are accessible to them AND more experienced fans and THAT is what matters. I am sick of having to explain myself, over and over.
If I didn’t cover it, I’m bad. If I cover it as a beginner, I’m bad. You are IMPOSSIBLE.
No matter how hard I try, there are complaints. And that sucks. And no, this isn’t call for Shodan or Red Snapper or anyone else to try and soothe my feelings. They get it. So does Manju. A few of you persistently and consistently don’t and to be frank, that’s rather ungrateful. Would you come to a dinner party where I was showing off my new Thai cooking skills and bitch about how the food should be better? No? Exactly.
ANNA I am not bitching about your coverage. I like it and I said so in your first cricket post.
Sakshi, that’s a plural you and I’m about to amend the comment to reflect that. After the first two paragraphs, it wasn’t really about you. Sorry.
sakshi I was very polite to DJ, I certainly didnt dress him down.
You know what it is? It’s the constant sniping and demands and moaning — makes people look like ingrates. Everyone is having fun with these threads — just read them, they’re great. They’re certainly not cliqueish because lots of people comment. Just relax and enjoy.
I know. Let’s just call it Urdu, as it was here, or whatever whenever. (Let’s save the use of ‘vernacular’ to refer to, say, the Syrian Xian church having its services in Malayalam, as opposed to Greek, e.g.).
BTW, Youtube has parodies of the Aloo speaking English, so it must have been hilarious when he did that too. There’s also one which mocks his religiosity – supposedly he forgot to say “Bismillah-e-R-e-R” as he began answering a question, and so had to say it mid-sentence! For the World Cup, I understand the Pakistani Cricket Board banned him (and all other team members) from giving English intreviews lest they mis-speak.
Back to Cricket y’all… What do you think will be reaction to Inzi when (and it may be a while!) before he goes back to pakistan?
I’ve had the baseball v. cricket debate more than I’ve cared to have. Curves & sliders vs. spinners, using gloves vs. no gloves, foul territory/fair territory vs. the over system. Balls vs “no balls”, umps vs. wickets.
Invariably, baseball comes out to be the more physically intensive sport. The velocities are just too high.
I was not as articulate as I should have been. I saw American exceptionalism where I shouldn’t have, and I apologize for that. That said, there’s no written law that being American is a reason not to be knowledgeable about things outside of mainstream America. Cricket is not mainstream here in the United States, but very few of the things covered in this blog are – that’s one of its many charms.
That said, this is your blog – you shouldn’t have to apologize for what you don’t write about, or do write about.
As a footnote, a number of the best journalists who cover cricket (Mike Marqusee, notably) are American. Never underestimate the trenchant perspective of the outsider.
@HMF
And the 162 game season with open ended games. Theoretically, a baseball game could go on forever while a cricket game is limited to 5 days at most….
That said, there’s nothing more enjoyable than an India-England Test match at Lords when both teams are playing well. One-day cricket just doesn’t do it (for me)…
Subdued, because of what has happened to Bob Woolmer
To clarify my first comment was not directed to Anna but to SM. I like reading Anna and respect and appreciate her interest in the game of cricket and for taking pain in initiating thread for viewpoints/discussions. As a regular SM reader (being from subcontinent, i feel outcast now though ), I just thought it might not have been terrible idea having some guest blogger to cover this event.
I didn’t know all things posted here are “directed” by some “heads” ? Again I repeat I din’t point my comment to “her”. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough.
Stop being arrogant and callous. I know there are other blogs and I do read them. People have some openness to accept sincere suggestions/viewpoints.
My thoughts exactly.
PS: Are SM Intern and Anna different ? I am confused.
OK DJ thanks for the advice.
Yes. The intern could be any one of us. Or two of us. It could even be you.
Also, “heads” is slang– in this context, for “cricet fanatics”.
Amitabh kaake,
Thand rakh okay…….I dont think I owe you any explanation but the only reason I used the word ‘vernacular’ was because I have heard Inzi in both Urdu and Punjabi and rather than write Urdu/Punjabi ,I just said vernacular.His interviews in ‘vernacular’ are hilarious because of his dead-pan delivery at times and his perfect timing of idioms….something that you laugh ‘alongwith’ and not ‘at’…….
But no of course,you had to make a big show out of it and beat your ‘you got no pride’ dhol since Bhai Veer Singh Ji handed down the custody of maan ,maryada and izzat of our languages in your hands of course.
Either I could laugh this garbage off or just say f.o.I choose the former.It reminded me of the phrase ‘verbal diarrhea intellectual constipation’
nfa:
Dude, there is no way I could have realised where you were coming from in your original comment. Obviously what I said doesn’t apply to you. But there are still a lot of English-speaking Indian snobs who look down on Indian languages, and ‘vernacular’ is a term often used by them, in the derogatory way I described.
Peace.
Thanks.
I apologize for (in retrospect) reaction,could have been more patient.
I actually have been guilty of wearing ‘the pride’ on my sleeve a a lot as well(as recent as on this post by Ennis).
Put it down to the loss against Bangladesh and the sinking feeling that I blew 199 rupees away.
Rabb rakha…
Anna and the Cricket Heads is all about love: love for Anna, love for the game, tested though the latter may be at the moment.
So, basically is this what SM has come to: unless we coo over the authors we are being ungrateful or disrespectful?
Seriously, SM Mods, why not move to Craigslist style community based moderation? You guys could hunker in the bunker, and intervene only when a comment got flagged a certain number of times.
No one said you should coo, but it would be nice if people weren’t assholes. There’s a vast middle ground to be inhabited. If people ARE cooing, it’s to balance out the toxic presence of assholery.
Also, did you miss this?
Or maybe it’s just more fun for you to have something to complain about?
Given that Sepia Mutiny maintains a uniquely open and friendly atmosphere, with new people commenting all the time, and a growing readership, accusations of turning into a closed community are laughable and silly.
stop complainin my brownies..we have a battle at hand…India vs Srilanka Chaminda!! Tendu!!!!! Dada!!
whos with me?
Right, that’s why in all the blogs written outside the US there are extensive posts analyzing the merits of the 3-4 defense and the Red Wings chances of winning the Stanley Cup. Smug, self-righteous idiot.
Speedy
Speedy (#97), not really sure where you’re going with that one… Hari’s bit o’ snark said that Americans take pride in their ignorance of the rest of the world (I disagree with him that SOME Americans are the only ones in the world guilty of this – plenty of such cases from other countries as well) – you know, ‘cuz Americans don’t NEED to, and that’s what makes America great.
The fact that there are blogs written outside the US in which you can find extensive posts analyzing the merits of the 3-4 defense and the Red Wings’ chances of winning the Stanley Cup is indicative of the sort of influence which American culture has on the tastes of people living in other countries, which supports what Hari was saying, in an around-sort-of-way.
It’s all about power.
Vivek,
Cultural ignorance is present in some places…but Hari originally tsk-tsked because he expected “more mature and extensive” cricket coverage– from an admitted neophyte cricket fan in a country where hardly anyone plays cricket. When someone called him on it, he played the “Ugly American” card.
Speedy
Sweeeeeet! I was there at the aloo incident! I remember the heckler, long hair and leather jacket.